Spelling Counts!

It wuz a boring day at NCIS headquarters. Specail Agent Anthony DiNozzo wuz dealing with it by being more annoying than usual. He kept throughing little pieces of paper at his partner Ziva David, then looking away when she terned to glare at him. "Tony, if you do that one more time, I swear I am going to shoot you" "But, Zee-vaa," Tony whined, streching out Ziva's name to annoy her "Its boring here". "Tony, this may be a wierd concept for u to get, but no one cares" snapped Gibbs. "What?" sed Tony "He's saying your arrogant, Tony" put in Timothy McGee.

So what was the point of that, you ask? To illustrate the spelling errors I frequently see when reading fan fiction. And just saying in the author's note "Oh Im a horrible speller, dont get made at me, but enjoy my story neway!" isn't an excuse (FYI: The spelling errors were put there deliberately to further prove my point). Most word-processing software comes with this handy little button called the spell-checker. They put it in for a reason; use it, please! Don't have a word processing program? Well, it's your lucky day! On the home page of fanfiction.net, there are links to download free word-processing programs. Also, there's a spell checker built right into the document manager where you upload your stories. You're using it anyway, so you might as well use that spell checker.

I have one tip that might help you with those pesky contractions that was drilled into me in school and a lot of people don't know it. Contractions stand for something, like "you're" stands for "you are", "that's" stands for "that is", "it's" stands for "it is" and so on. If you're confused as to which to use, then think if the long form of the contraction will make sense in your sentence. If it does, then use the contraction, if not, don't. So to use my example at the top, McGee is telling DiNozzo that he is arrogant. So which one is correct, "You're" or "your"? "You are arrogant, Tony" fits the sentence better than the "Your arrogant, Tony" that I purposely used. "Your" means possession, like if I was referring to "your" mitten. The mitten belongs to you. As an additional note, do NOT under ANY circumstances use chat speak in a story. Like how I used "wuz" instead of "was" in my example. Not to sound rude, but if you can't take the time to put in the effort to spell everything out in non-chat speak words, then why are you bothering putting the time into writing a story? This, even more so then spelling errors, makes you look dumb and most of all, lazy. There is a place for chat speak and this is not it.

Admittedly, I'm a bit of a spelling Nazi, but it's honestly hard to enjoy a story with so many spelling errors. For one thing, it communicates to the reader that you, as the writer, are not that intelligent and they don't take you seriously as a result. They won't read any of your stories and isn't that why you posted them in the first place? Secondly, it's hard to understand what you're trying to say if there are so many spelling errors. Thirdly, and most importantly in my opinion, it ruins the story. I've seen so many stories that seem like they're going to have a great plot, yet there are so many spelling errors, I can't get into them.

Contrary to popular belief, spelling does count. You may not lose points in a grade, but you'll lose readers if you post stories with sloppy spelling. Anything that has the primary purpose of being read by the public take the time to spell everything right and not in chat speak; you wouldn't read them otherwise. The same thing applies for fan fiction. A couple of spelling errors, fine, nobody's perfect, but a whole chapter full of spelling errors and chat speak is inexcusable. Here's a link to a list of some Common Spelling Mistakes. Your story has the potential for greatness and if you just remember the tips I gave you here, you'll turn your adequate, misspelled story into a great one in no time! It make take a few extra minutes to click that little check mark, but if you really and truly care about your story and what people will think of it, then those few extra minutes will be nothing.

The Problem With Time Travel Fan Fictions

A common theme of fan fiction is the "What would happen if..." theme. I've noticed this especially in Lord of the Rings fan fiction. It's also on somewhat of a similar vein to Mary-Sue fan fiction as many people like to do the typical "What would happen if my friends and I were magically transported to Middle Earth?" storyline. Other common "What would happen if..." story lines include "What would happen if there were a 1oth member to the Fellowship?" To be honest, I don't read a lot of this type of fan fictions. I can be as anti-canon as the next person, but there are limits to how anti-canon I am. I don't particularly like stories that throw people from current times into stories set in not current universes. It just doesn't seem right to me to have people talking about cars and the Internet in a Lord of the Rings fan fiction because Lord of the Rings is supposed to have been set eons ago. (I know, it's also odd for a girl who's a fan of Back to the Future to not like time travel stories, but whatever). I can't quite put my finger on why I dislike this specific type; possibly it's because this theme is overdone, or possibly because the few I have read simply retell the story.

And that's my point of the day. I'm sure there are great stories that throw people from current time into the Lord of the Rings universe somewhere out there (if anyone knows of any, please let me know!), but when they just retell the story, honestly, what's the point of reading them? The whole point of fan fiction is to develop your own ideas of something that could happen and use these characters (and some of your own if you like) to tell it.

This concept is different from a story that takes an event that occurred in one of the books (or movies) and shows it through someone else's eyes, for example: the events of what happened in Bree where the four hobbits meet up with Aragorn told through Aragorn's eyes. This is different because, though the scene has occurred in the story, we didn't see it from Aragorn's point of view. It's someone's idea of what Aragorn might have been thinking. It may contain minimal dialogue copied from that scene to get the story going or end it, but it's mostly description; it's mostly Aragorn's thoughts, what he was thinking while watching the hobbits.

A story that simply retells the story of Lord of the Rings with one minor change, is just redundant, actually comes very close to copyright infringement and is another reason why many authors (and others) have issues with fan fiction; because people are taking (near) their exact words and ideas and passing them off as their own. And that's the kind of stuff that give fan fiction a bad name.

Despite my mixed feelings towards throwing characters from current times into Lord of the Rings, there's really nothing wrong with it as long as you do it appropriately. Meaning, COME UP WITH YOUR OWN REASONS FOR PUTTING THESE CHARACTERS THERE! If you want your character to be part of the Fellowship, fine, just, maybe invent another world-saving quest for them to go on where your character is the one who everything depends on, not Frodo, don't just make them the 10th member of Frodo's quest. If you want Legolas to fall madly in love with your character, perhaps have him meet her (or him, depending) before or after Leoglas goes on the quest. Or even nix the time travel idea and just make your character into an elf who's lived in Middle Earth all along (rather than a story I tried to read where 3 girls from present day were sucked into Middle Earth and turned into elves). You can still be you falling in love with Legolas even if you change the time period you're living in. Time travel stories are difficult ones to write and still keep true to the story without sounding childish. If you're going to do one, just please make up your own idea. The Lord of the Rings trilogy has already been written, thanks. If you're interested in checking out some Lord of the Rings fan fiction, click the link and it'll take you to the Lord of the Rings page on fanfiction.net!

Fan Fiction's Positive Affect on My Writing

This article Why Heather Can Write quite frankly was fantastic. I actually read it twice. A lot of the things really hit home for me and allowed me to reflect on my writing in a way that would never have occurred to me otherwise.

What difference will it make, over time, if a growing percentage of young writers begin publishing and getting feedback on their work while they are still in high school? And what happens when those young writers compare notes, becoming critics, editors, and mentors? Will they develop their craft more quickly-and develop a critical vocabulary for thinking about storytelling?

I know for a fact that writing fan fiction has definitely enhanced my writing capabilities. Sure, we did writing in high school; I had to do the term papers and whatnot, but I rarely got the opportunity to write fiction and when I did, I completely ate it up (and not to brag, wowed my teachers). Even at my college there is no creative writing course. I got a bit of creative writing when I took a short story class a couple of years ago, but not a lot. The writing instruction at my high school in general was simply: Write this, not: This is how you write. Rarely got grammar instruction either after elementary school (which would explain my occasional problems with grammar). But it was in writing fan fiction that I got my best chances to really focus on developing my writing skills and I applied what I learned there to not only my fan fiction writing, but my school writing as well, not the other way around. And again, to go back to betas, they can teach you about some aspects of grammar and other aspects of writing that your own education may have missed. Overall, my grammar might be messed up sometimes, but any improvements I have made on it have been through writing fan fiction.

Editing: A Fresh Pair of Eyes

Not only is editing yourself as much as possible key to a successful story, it's also a good thing to have someone else look over your work too. In the fan fiction world, this is called a beta reader. On fanfiction.net, there is a whole section that lists beta readers. Like this awesome article I found says, beta readers will read your stories and give you constructive criticism with an objective eye on everything from characterization to spelling and grammar to story pacing to pretty much anything you can think of. The key of this is constructive criticism. Some people get defensive at any form of criticism, but that's not what the average beta reader is going for at all. They're not saying your story is bad, they just want to help you make the best possible story you can. Sometimes you miss things when you're looking at your own work. You may know what you're trying to say and as a result, your brain may skip over things or add in details you think aren't crucial, but are needed to understand the story. The average reader doesn't have the advantage of being a mind reader or being in your head; they may have no idea and a beta reader can help you with that.

I know having a beta helped me for the brief time I had one while writing Wedding Bells and Bomb Shells. She helped me clear up the issues I have with punctuation and a lot of other stuff. I was quite grateful for all of her help. Unfortunately, in rereading my story a while back, I think I may have accidentally insulted her by implying that her not getting back to me on a chapter was the reason for a long break I had between updates, when it wasn't; I was just busy. So if you ever wrote under the pen name Mirandabelle and beta read a story called Wedding Bells and Bomb Shells and you're reading this, I'm sorry if I insulted you! I didn't mean it like that; I'm just really good at putting my foot in my mouth at times! So yeah, the moral of this particular story is don't insult your beta.

No one likes to read a story with obvious errors (and sometimes even non-obvious ones!) that could have been fixed by simply having another pair of eyes looking at your story. It's not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of having the maturity to want to make your story the best that it can be.

Editing: The Fine Line Between Genius (of a long fic) and Insanity (of a long, overly detailed fic)

I found this article a little while back: Random Thoughts on Writing and I've gotta say that I agreed with pretty much everything the author said. A few things specifically jumped out at me...

Remember word economy; when you've finished your piece, go back and edit ruthlessly. If it doesn't add to the story, the character, the reader's understanding, then turf it. Lose the excess baggage; travel light. A finely crafted short fic can have all the kick – in fact it can have even more – than a longer one because it's concentrated...Know the right starting point in your story; if you start too far ahead of yourself, you risk confusing the reader; start too early and you might just bore them...

This is especially crucial. Honestly, I wish I'd known this when I was posting my first story, a 30-chapter M*A*S*H story called Wedding Bells and Bomb Shells. At the time, I thought it was great. I still do for the most part, but when I re-read it a couple of weeks ago, I found so many things I would take out if I could post it all over again,especially in the first 6 or 7 chapters. The underlying plot is the wedding of Hawkeye and Margaret, but no specific wedding details (minus wedding planning) start until about midway through the story. Some of the non-wedding parts were fine, others weren't needed. Detail and wordiness, have always been two of my major downfalls and not just when it comes to writing fan fiction. My problem is I don't edit nearly as much as I should. Writing this blog has really helped me realize the importance of editing. While I think my writing is, not to brag, pretty good, it'd be great if I looked it over a few times before posting. I think I'm starting to get there but I have a ways to go yet, especially as I seriously begin to approach my next multi-chaptered story, set in the Scrubs universe. Random details and subplots can, on the whole, add to the story, but there is a fine line between this and detail for the sake of detail.

Slash: A Different Way of Looking at it

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.